That Net Site

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

Hi everyone, please be patient if I have not yet been able to respond to any of your comments, we have had some heavy storms through our location cutting us off with no power and other services. Plus also local storm damage such as trees down over fences and needing to clean up before the next storm due tonight.

On top of that my health is an ongoing issue which more often that I would like makes it difficult to make the time to come online and answer requests for helps, especially in the SobiPro post. I will get to your comments and questions, just be patient please or if you need more urgent help you may wish to ask for help on the SobiPro forums and take out a one month membership when you have all your questions ready to ask, then you can go through them all in that one month.

So again, sorry about my absence and the delays in responding but just note I do have them on my list of ‘when I can get to them’. Thanks for your understanding.

I am not usually one to overly praise a template design but I must make a note of this one as in my view it is the most simple, visually nice and best administration template I have ever used since using Joomla (since it split from Mambo). Mission Control by Rocket Theme is an elegant administration template that is very well layed out, easy to identify where each part of the admin side of Joomla is and far better for the novice user of any Joomla web site. It is now my default Administration template for all Joomla sites I have, use and develop.

While the default and standard administration template for Joomla is fine it is more targetted towards a user that really knows Joomla, which for me is fine but for many others it can be daunting and even a little scary to use (based on comments from non Joomla users). I have tried many other administration templates, including the Adminpraise templates which are quite good as well, however the Mission Control template is less cluttered, better layed out and just easier to use for the novice to even the most expert Joomla user.

I need to make a note I have been a great fan of Rocket Theme templates for quite some time, having a full paid membership with them for about 4 years, however I dropped membership earlier this year simply because they now solely use the Gantry system, which I personally don’t like. That is not to say the system is not good it just means itis not good for me personally. I prefer to have control of the framework myself.

The Mission Control template is absolutely 100% free and is available for both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6, hopefully they will continue to maintain it for the upcoming Joomla 1.7 and then 1.8, which I am sure they will.

Instead of me showing every aspect of the theme I think it is best for you to get it and install it yourself, try it out and I am sure you too will think that this is one of, if not the best admin template for Joomla so far.

If you have seen my alternative 7-zip icons I made and have liked them and wanted to use them then I have something even better to tell you about and that is the new 7-Zip Theme Manager built by Mark “KillerCookie” Keller and Marco “MAD’S evilution” which goes even further than just replacing the icons, it provide the ability for you to also replace the overall look of 7-zips file manager and its icons with many themes and file type icons to choose from. (more…)

January 10 2011 saw the release of the much anticipated release of Joomla 1.6. Like many other Joomla users world wide I too was eager to get a hold of 1.6 and give it a whirl. With a reported 2.7% of the worlds web sites supposedly using Joomla, the 1.6 release had the hopes of a significant amount of people to take their web site to the next level.

I installed Joomla 1.6 as a fresh test site and had a play with the new features and began to get familiar with the new layouts, templates, categories, menus and user system. It was nice, it had a better interface and from what I could tell it seemed quicker and sleeker than the 1.5 version. Of course this was a fresh install with no added extensions but it still had the new feel to it that was a draw card.

More and more web sites are using an open source solution that has been developed by 1 or many individuals in their own spare time for little to no money. The open source community is massive, with many thousands of people contributing daily to further develop existing solutions as well as develop new ones. Many of these open source solutions are provided freely, without cost of any kind and usually with only a simple request for a small donation if you find the solution is useful to your needs. This is what makes open source so great. (more…)

Do you use a browser advert blocker? If you don’t know what they are just Google for adblocker and there will be one available for your web browser.

Myself, well I choose not to use any advert blockers, Why? Well I look at adverts on the sites that I visit as a way for that web site owner to try and recoup many of the hours of effort spent on providing that web site to me to read and browse through. Though very little will actually click on any of the adverts the few that do will often help contribute to that web sites ongoing development and maintenance.

I have had quite a few people download the 7-zip icons I have created and with that a few comments to say there are missing archives and that it does not work for the 9.x series of 7-zip.

So I have now updated the zip file with new archive formats and I have tested this on Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows7 (32-bit and 64-bit) with 7-zip 9.15. I have now also tested the same files on Windows XP Pro 32-bit and it works just the same – so what are you waiting for? Update your 7-zip icons now 🙂 (more…)

If you read my earlier post about Adobe killing of Homesite you may have thought so what will I (and others) use now. I am very happy to say and recommend a great product called TopStyle. Initially developed by Nick Bradbury of whom was the original developer of Homesite, TopStyle is now being further developed by Stefan van As.

As a long time user of TopStyle Lite that was included with some Homesite installs I can happily say that the latest version, TopStyle 4, is a remarkable product. Originally designed to be for css documents, Topstyle 4 has now been expanded to cover most web code formats from html, xhtml, php, asp and so many more.

I am sure many out there that develop web sites have had the annoying need to keep tweaking styles and code for Internet Explorer 6 (ie6), I know I have and enough is enough.

There has to be a time where web developers must make a stand and say no more. For me this is now, I feel people have had more than enough time to update to a better browser and for those that still use ie6 (or less) then they need to be told to update.

My reasons are simple, I have better things to do with my time than to keep trying to tweak web sites to suit a smaller group that continue to choose not to update their web browser. There are many other obviouse reasons that if your nodding your heading you are already aware of, if not then go and read up on why by doing a Google search for ie6 hacks…

It is sad news, my beloved XHTML editor is now dead no thanks to Adobe with them announcing the death of Homesite as of the 26th May 2009. They acquired Homesite from Macromedia (2003) and simply let it die, without even a hint of updating it or letting anyone know it would be abandoned since they took it over.

While other editors exist and will have to take the place of Homesite, at this stage there os no product (yet) that is as good as Homesite. Adobe have simply said use Dreamweaver, but if I wanted to use Dreamweaver I would already be doing that. The benefit Homesite has over Dreamweaver is that Homesite is light weight and very customisable – which is very different to Dreamweaver which is well over priced (as are all Adobe products) and is over bloated with extensions and tools and add-ons that for the most part are not needed.